John Corcoran 12:23
One thing I want to really interesting argument, I think, is around countries, May 3 World countries that have had runaway inflation, where the money has been devalued. And traditionally, it was very difficult for people to move their money, one to protect it against this kind of runaway inflation, which is often a combination of factors and might have been the government mismanaging or whatever the monetary fiscal supply. But there could be various different reasons. But But So one issue is this runaway inflation has just stripped people’s wealth. And then another issue is, or an argument for using cryptocurrencies is the ability to take that wealth that people have accumulated and be able to transfer it to another part of the globe. And it was something it was very difficult to do before because you can only carry so much gold bars and maybe if you’re fleeing a country, due to oppression, you’re not even able to take any of that money out. So talk a little bit about the ways in which that is an argument for adopting forms of cryptocurrency.
Richard Carthon 13:31
You know, I think this is a great question. And this is going to be a very long winded answer. But everyone please stick with me like I promised these two stories are going to really bring it all home. So when I first got into crypto, I was very into Aetherium and into altcoins. And I eventually got to Bitcoin. What got me there for Bitcoin was two different things that happened. The first was I had a friend who was living in the Philippines that was working in oil and gas. And when he was making his money, he would he would get paid in the local currency have to convert it into the US dollar then would send them money to his family back in United States. And through all of that he’d lose 40% of his money, it would take five to 10 business days. And he was getting frustrated. So what he started to do was convert his money to Bitcoin, he would transfer it to his family. And it wouldn’t seconds cost a couple of dollars. Yeah. And it would only take a couple of minutes. Wow. And I was like, That makes so much sense. I’m like that’s what helped bring cryptocurrency as a whole to me, but also I was like, Okay, this Bitcoin thing there might there might be some citizens like where in the world can you go where your dollars $1 is $1 Wherever we go to another country, you got to convert it and there’s all these conversion rates but if bitcoin is a Bitcoin anywhere in the globe, and I think that’s really powerful. Now the second story that really drove it home for me and actually is a service I now use it was someone who came on my show. His name was Yan Pritzker. He was the CTO of Swan Bitcoin, which is now I think, just one. He was telling me the story about his Family and how his family survived the Holocaust. And when they were leaving in coming to the states, the only thing one of his family members had was this. She had a pendant, and one of the soldiers took it from her. And so when they kept to the states, they were they were all the wealth that they have accumulated over the years was gone, started fresh. And you’re saying if bitcoin existed, as long as you know, if you were to put that into a cold wallet, storage, let’s say like a ledger, and you remembered your seed phrase, all you need to do is remember your seed phrase, you can literally be naked, flee to another country, by a somehow get a letter, or whatever you need, put in that letter, and you have all of your wealth. So you can memorize a series of love of words.
John Corcoran 15:44
And that would be, you’d be able to amazing
Richard Carthon 15:50
you can go anywhere, at any point, you need to flee, you need to get out there. For example, when the war in Ukraine happened there was they they right at the end, they legalized crypto, a lot of their families converted all their money into crypto, and they fled the country. And then they got into another country, and then they just recovered it to the local currency. So you want to talk about, you know, a real recent example of that happening to happen unfortunately, there’s your example. And even when you look at El Salvador, they just made their they just made the reserve currency legal tender Bitcoin, how now their their economy is actually starting to stabilized. And they’re starting to get more and more ways for people to use utilizing like, Lightning Network and other things like that, to have everyday transactions utilizing Bitcoin. So the world is changing, and people are seeing the applications for it. It’s gonna take time, but but people are witnessing, and it’s not just like, in the US, we don’t really see these challenges. But overseas, these are real challenges that are being faced all the time. And that’s why the adoption is much higher
John Corcoran 16:58
elsewhere. Right? Yeah. Especially like I’ve heard interviews about like an Africa, where it’s where there’s a lot of different countries, a lot of different currencies, a lot of different border issues and transferring money. So that’s one place. But I think, you know, with inflation being a an issue that’s grabbing headlines in the United States here in 2022. And last year, I think there’s been more awareness to that to the fact that there can be forces beyond your control beyond your personal impact. That’s, you know, stripping away buying power in the wealth that you’ve accumulated to.
Richard Carthon 17:37
Definitely. And the other issue with it, too, the US dollar is as strong as it’s ever been. Europe has been deflated and has parity. But yet, we as Americans, we’re still printing money. We’re still inflating ourselves. So what does that doing to the rest of the world? At what point? Does our inflation caused such havoc overseas, that they start looking for another solution that other countries are literally starting to evaluate other options, and you know, one of them is starting to come up is Bitcoin?
John Corcoran 18:11
Yeah. Now there are always people that are detractors and make a variety of different arguments against both bitcoin and cryptocurrency. One of his one of them, one of the oldest ones is that oh, this could allow people to launder money, Lau gangsters criminals to take money, and they wouldn’t be trackable. What do you say to that argument?
Richard Carthon 18:35
Everything is public ledger. So there’s been several cases where people tried to do that. And then someone had the time and went through all the transactions and have been uncovering people who have been trying to do that. launderers and people who scammed they’re gonna try to find any new tool to do what they do. Like, it’s just, it comes with the territory until the end of time. scam is gonna scam, launder is going to launder. People are going to do what they do. And this isn’t an excuse for it. However, the difference here is that because everything is literally public ledger, like you can go online, and you can follow the money everywhere that you want. If you just have enough time and persistence, you can track it all. You can figure it out with enough time, persistence and resilience. And that’s something that we’ve never had before. Before. You couldn’t really follow the money. You can follow the money now. Yeah,
John Corcoran 19:30
there’s been plenty of money laundering, right? Or like people bills like you can’t trace a bill right that for over the years. What about so as I said, we’re recording this in August of 2022. The stock markets are down this year. Cryptocurrency market is in a bear market. How should people be adjusting to that?
Richard Carthon 19:51
So I’m not about to give financial advice. I’m going to give my perspective on what I’m currently looking at. So For your brand new person that’s coming into the crypto space bear markets are the time, a great time for entry. And the reason being is that you will you’re seeing people, for example, will just use Bitcoin. Last year everyone in the mom saw Mom, oh my gosh, this Bitcoin thing, it’s great, it’s going, going all the way up, it started the year at $30,000, got up to $67,000, and is now back down to 20. So you can get in at a better price than people who were raving about it a year ago. And if you look at the history of time, over the course of Bitcoin, there’s, over the course of a decade, there’s always been a moment where people are like, Oh, it’s too late, I was too expensive, when when Bitcoin went from $25 to 100, and then went back down to 40. They’re like, Oh, I missed it, it’s a sham, then it went from 100 to 1000, back down to like 400 errors, like it’s a sham, then it goes up to 1000, up to 10,000, it comes back down, like you see the pattern like it, you give Bitcoin, enough time and a lot of these blue chip Kryptos, even Aetherium, in theory at what when I first got into the market, Bitcoin got up to 19,000, went all the way back down to 3000, went up to 14,000, went all the way back down to 6000, then went all the way up to 67,000. That’s just been in the last four years, you see Aetherium Aetherium, up to $1,400, went all the way back down to 200. And then went all the way up to fourth. This is all in the last four years. So yes, there are moments where you will see 60 to 90% corrections and that that is a gut punch. That is that is hard to look at and be like man, this stinks like this. But But when you’ve seen this enough times when you’ve seen the cycles when you’ve seen the pattern start to form, you have to think of cryptocurrency as a long term investment. If you come in as a trader, and a lot of people come in with the wrong distinction that they are traders versus an investor traders are trying to make a quick profit, they’re trying to come in the market out of the market. And if you are an investor, someone who’s going to come in, put in money, and then let let it ride for a while or decide when you’re going to come in and out. It’s less stressful because you now have time, time on your side. And when you have time. On Your Side, historically, you do pretty well. You just gotta give things enough time to be able to mature and in bear markets typically when you enter our good times, because when you have 90% corrections for a better for good projects, typically you see at least a 50% retracement all the way back to potential all time highs are 20% a little bit low of that over the course of two to three years. That’s, that’s not bad. So you just when you can see the whole picture you see in can you can look at these different opportunity to see what makes the most sense for you. I’m not saying go sell your house and take all the money and put it into crypto, but five to 10% that you’re okay with your high risk, high reward and then deciding on which cryptocurrencies makes sense for you. And you have, instead of a couple of days or a couple of weeks or a couple month trajectory and look at it as a three to five to 10 year plan, you’re probably gonna have a pretty good amount of success.
John Corcoran 23:10
Yeah. I want to ask about you know, there’s, I had an interesting interview with Mark Stephany, who does the progressive Bitcoin are and we talked about kind of traditionally disenfranchised populations and ways in which crypto and Bitcoin in particular can help kind of level the playing field, especially for people that haven’t, you know, benefited from these up swings and wealth that have happened with the economy. What do you say to people that are lower income? Maybe they’re skeptical about this new technology? Why should they take it seriously? Why does it have potential for them
Richard Carthon 23:55
towards generational wealth, this is the most level playing field the world has ever had to be able to create generational wealth, and everyone has a fair chance at the exact same time, because why people have access to internet. And by having access to internet, you can use the same tools that your advanced trader has, or whomever you can now go on your phone and use the same resources that everyone has. So I came with my experience at Merrill Lynch one of the things that bothered me while I was there, unfortunately, was that seeing all the resources and tools that the wealthy have to make more money and have their money continued to multiply over time. So one just having the access to actually being able to do those things getting your high CDs your yield so you know most people most people in the world don’t have $1,000 in a savings account. But even if you have $1,000 in your savings account you’re making like point 1% Are you making like 1% which is doing nothing to help grow your money? Yeah, but then you have your your wealthy who can then go get like CDs and these other things remain guaranteed anywhere from six to 10%. Year over year, just letting your money sit and build and they’re not having to do anything, they’re just making money. A lot of people don’t have that access. Now in the world of crypto, you have decentralized finance, you now have these different tools in place that if you have X amount of money, you can now go put it in this defy protocol. And it can make you seven to 20% by letting it sit there and you don’t need a lot of money to have your money, make money. And you would now have the same tools and access that everyone else does. Yes, there’s more risk, because you have to do your due diligence, you have to understand what’s going on, you have to understand how to put all this stuff in. But again, you can do the research, you can spend the time you can do all this stuff, and learn it and do it and use it yourself. Whereas most people, the only way that they have access is through financial advisors, or through people who deal with money all the time. And then not just that, you have to have enough money. And we were talking $100,000 Plus, to be able to participate in some of these high yielding opportunities. And so this is completely leveled the playing field, the story I’d like to go to is, if you knew about Bitcoin, as soon as it came out someone the day like, Hey, look at this thing, put it 20 20,000. So in 2010, you put in $20 worth of bitcoin, today, that’d be worth five to $6 million. So in 12 years, you would be a multimillionaire off of $20. That is unreal, even looking at Aetherium Aetherium. If you put in $20 when it first came out, and you waited till now to take it out, you’d be worth six figures. So you just made over $100,000 on $20. I’m not saying there’s going to be just an absurd amount of Kryptos that have the same opportunity, but there will be more there has been more. And by educating yourself in this space, by diversifying yourself into this space, you can have a little bit of money turned into an absurd amount of money all because you participated you educate yourself, you diversified into the space.
John Corcoran 26:55
I know we’re running a little short on time. But before we wrap up, I want to ask about two terms that get thrown out a lot. Now they are NF T’s are non fungible tokens. And also web three. Those are two that we’ve seen in headlines a lot recently. For those who haven’t heard those terms or aren’t familiar with them. Tackle them, how do we how do we understand what they are and what their potential are?
Richard Carthon 27:18
So let’s talk about NF T’s first non fungible tokens. So there’s a lot of paths that we can go but one of the easiest ways is to think of a profile picture. So one of the most famous NF T’s right now are crypto punks, and bought a yacht club. Matter of fact, the board a yacht club, literally just on the VMAs, Snoop Dogg and Eminem did a performance where their board apes went to the multiverse multiverse. Metaverse and then did a performance. And so it’s starting to become even more in in mainstream hip hop culture, et cetera. So an NFT a non fungible token can be used in a lot of different ways. It can be used as a PFP, which is like a profile picture that you can like us on Twitter and other stuff like that, where you can identify with this thing, where you there’s a certain amount that is created, and then you can follow it on the blockchain and see what it was sold for who was all created for it, etc. So I’m talking from the there’s there’s two use cases, the people who are purchasing them and using them, and then the people who are creating Now, the reason why nfts You’re like, well, I have this jpg picture, like, why can I just like copy and do whatever? Well before you could, and that’s where a lot of people, there’s like Getty Images and these other things, we have to pay for these pictures. A lot of them can’t really prove the origination then like who owns it and who does what, by putting this on blockchain, you can now do that. And now not just that you can make residual income. So there’s a lot of famous artists out there. One is, for example, Banksy, Banksy, when he first came out, make a lot of art that he didn’t get to make a lot of money off of when he originally did it. So let’s say one of his first pieces he sold for $10,000. And that same piece today is worth 10 million. He only made 10,000. That’s all he Yeah, he had done it as an NFT. He would have made that $10,000 off of that original NFT. And then whatever his fee is, and let’s say it’s 10%. Every time it’s resold, he makes 10%. So now he has lifelong residual income off of that one piece.
John Corcoran 29:16
Yeah. And I also think it’s fascinating how you could do this for other forms of creators or artists as well, whether it’s, you know, illustrators or musicians or filmmakers or whatever.
Richard Carthon 29:28
Absolutely. I interviewed a guy recently named ma spotty Wi Fi is a rapper based in New York. And he was saying that he was able to sell out his collection of music that he created and made over six figures in like six minutes, six minutes. Wow. And it’s just allowing people to uniquely be able to create new revenue streams for themselves. And and there’s the the opportunities and the ways that entities can be utilized are pretty limitless. And I’m excited that we’re just at the beginning of this journey. There’s a lot By the way that this is going to be unpacked in NF T’s could be an entire episode. So I’ll stop there. Yeah. Switching over to web three. So when people say web 3.0, what do they mean? So Web 1.0, the first internet boom, and the wave of the first internet, it was just read. So you go on these very basic websites, you can go there, you can read what’s going on. There’s not a lot of back and forth interaction. It’s just you’re you’re there looking. Web 2.0 was read, right? So Facebook, MySpace, etc, you can go on there, you can see what’s going on, you can run on people’s posts, it’s back and forth, conversation, etc. Web 3.0 is read white, right? Own. So now you are owning what is happening, being part of the system. So if you are going and contributing to different posts in different committees, now you can earn, whether it’s the local cryptocurrency that’s there or whether it is if you’re part of like a dowel, decentralized, autonomous organization, and that’s again, another buzzword for another day. But you can earn by participating in that community and doing different things and then being rewarded for it. Like imagine all the people who spent an absurd amount of time on Facebook, on MySpace, etc. Yeah. Imagine if you could have gotten any money just purely based on activities you did on that platform, right? Web three is now providing for you.
John Corcoran 31:17
That’s exciting to me, because sometimes it seems like some of these big tech platforms, Facebook is one of them. It has so much momentum, so much control over our society and everything. And it seems like how’s it even possible that they could possibly someone could dethrone them, but you mentioned like Dows decentralized organizations shows that potential so that, you know, people can come be a part of this community. And being good. Wikipedia is another example. Right? Like people do it. Or Yelp, they they participate in these communities, because they get satisfaction out of being a part of it. But why not give them ownership as well? Why not have a way that they can benefit rather than, you know, the handful of people who own the tech platform at the top?
Richard Carthon 32:04
Right? What one of the ways that you can look at it, right? If you’re on a platform, and it’s free? And you’re like, Well, how, how are they making money or whatever it is, it’s you or your product, you It’s you now on web 3.0 Because you are a part of it. Now you get to receive that now you get to own a piece of the pie and get to earn from it. And like that’s what makes it so special.
John Corcoran 32:26
Yeah, yeah. That’s great. Richard, this has been really fascinating. Thank you for engaging me and hopping around from topic to topic. As I have kind of weaved in bobbed and stuff like that. Where can people go to learn more about you and learn more about Crypto Current?
Richard Carthon 32:42
Absolutely. So you can go to crypto-current.co. We’re on all social platforms, you can find us on Twitter, Discord, Telegram, Facebook, just search Crypto Current you’re gonna find us. And we have a lot of really good educational content on there. What’s great about cryptocurrency, we’re not selling you anything. We’re just trying to give you information. We’re trying to give you resources, I want you to be empowered to be able to make your own decisions. But I also want you to be able to get alpha and get some really cool opportunities to learn about projects extremely early, for example, if the requirements back in 2019 for decentraland. And, and one of our speakers was decentraland. And at the time, when I was first learning about it, you could go on Coinbase and was worth three cents at the height of last year. It’s like $5. So like, imagine if you had learned about it said no, I’m just gonna throw 100 bucks at this thing. It’s now worth a tremendous amount of money, right? So it’s just, we want to be able to show you a lot of really cool products in this space while providing you education. And that’s it. Cool. Richard, thank you so much. Thank you.
Outro 33:45
Thank you for listening to the Smart Business Revolution Podcast with John Corcoran. Find out more at smartbusinessrevolution.com. And while you’re there, sign up for our email list and join the revolution. And be listening for the next episode of the Smart Business Revolution Podcast.